contralto voice, her fine animal strength of bone and muscle
(admittedly greater than his own); he admired her indomitable
courage and self-reliance, while her positive genius in the
matters of seamanship and navigation filled him with speechless
wonder. The girls he had been used to were clever only in their
knowledge of the amenities of an afternoon call or the formalities
of a paper german. A girl of two-and-twenty who could calculate
longitude from the altitude of a star was outside his experience.
The more he saw of her the more he knew himself to have been right
in his first estimate. She drank whiskey after her meals, and
when angry, which was often, swore like a buccaneer. As yet she
was almost, as one might say, without sex--savage, unconquered,
untamed, glorying in her own independence, her sullen isolation.
Her neck was thick, strong, and very white, her hands roughened
and calloused. In her men's clothes she looked tall, vigorous,
and unrestrained, and on more than one occasion, as Wilbur passed
close to her, he was made aware that her hair, her neck, her
entire personality exhaled a fine, sweet, natural redolence that
savored of the ocean and great winds.

One day, as he saw her handling a huge water-barrel by the chines
only, with a strength he knew to be greater than his own, her
brows contracted with the effort, her hair curling about her thick
neck, her large, round arms bare to the elbow, a sudden thrill of
enthusiasm smote through him, and between his teeth he exclaimed
to himself:

"By Jove, you're a woman!"

The "Bertha Millner" continued to the southward, gliding quietly